Ex-neighbor: Brockton slaying follows pattern of abuse

Shelley Bynoe-Simpson regrets not calling police when she heard the yelling and banging in the upstairs apartment in Randolph.

Benjamin Paulin The Patriot Ledger @BPaulin_Ledger

BROCKTON – Shelley Bynoe-Simpson regrets not calling police when she heard the yelling and banging in the upstairs apartment.

Bynoe-Simpson lived in a Randolph apartment below Florence Beaulieu and her husband and four children for about two years. On Friday, Beaulieu, 37, was found dead in a Brockton apartment that she had recently moved to, in what officials are calling a suspicious death.

“They always, when they came out, were very nice to me. But when they went back in the house it was terrible,” Bynoe-Simpson said. “There was a lot of fighting.”

Bynoe-Simpson, 58, said she was a mounted police officer with the Boston Police Department for 24 years.

She said she would often hear Beaulieu’s husband yelling at her and calling her “all kinds of filthy names.”

“I heard stuff bounce off my ceiling that made me flinch. It sounded like furniture,” she said.

“I was going to call the police a couple times because I was really nervous for her. I like to mind my own business. But I should have called,” she said crying. “Now I feel really bad that I didn’t call because it was terrible.”

She said Beaulieu’s children were very polite and would often help bring her groceries up the stairs to her second-floor apartment.

Neighbors said two of Beaulieu’s daughters found their mother’s body in the hallway of their apartment at 124 Forest Ave. on Friday. Neighbors said they did not know the family very well because they had moved into the multi-family house within the past two or three months.

Bob Buckley, the chief of staff for Brockton Mayor Bill Carpenter, said police are investigating the death as “suspicious.”

On Friday, police were searching for a 2006 gray BMW driven by a Randolph man.

“You (expletive). You do what I tell you to do,” Bynoe-Simpson recalled hearing from the apartment above in Randolph.

She said Beaulieu dressed in nice clothes, but remembers her often wearing long sleeves and high collars, even in warmer weather.

As of Saturday afternoon, police had not charged Beaulieu’s husband or anyone else in her death. The Plymouth County district attorney’s office is investigating the death and said there would be an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death.

Anyone with information about how Beaulieu died is asked to call 508-923-4205.